


(but none of them are mine)

by 1001cranes



Series: Nemo - Phoenix Fields [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: What is something you will never see again?akathe cult au





	(but none of them are mine)

_ What is something you will never see again? _

| |

Everyone forgets.

That’s the first thing they tell you when you come to worship. Whether the lowest of the initiates, the highest of the priests, or the holiest of the clerics, all forget eventually. He is a God of Forgetting, and even those who worship and love most fervently, even those who are  _ blessed  _ still forget.

They all. Everyone. Forgets. 

| |

_ Everyone has me but nobody can lose me - what am I? _

| |

You were a child when the first of the graffiti appeared - scrawled in Common up and down the city streets. His name appeared in thick splatters of ink, uneven smears of white paint. Messy hand prints. Careless splatter on the street beside it. 

NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY  
  
NOBODY SEES

NOBODY LIVES HERE

NOBODY, over and over and over. 

Most of what was written seemed like nonsense. Like a riddle. As if it wasn’t designed to really say anything at all. Your father, who was good humored and rarely bothered by the little details of life, paid it no mind; your mother huffed and rolled her eyes, complaining about ruffians and graffitti to anyone who would listen.

You still remember that much.

| |

_ What lives without body, hears without ears, speaks without mouth, and is born in air?  _

| |

You come to find the day-to-day patterns of temple life don’t change. Temples are of course for contemplation and worship - the ritual of the dawn and dusk and midnight services, the prayers said, the initiates and dedicants blessed. Here it doesn’t much matter whether you call a day Monday or Tuesday, Rest Day or Arrival Day, a Lost Day or a Working Day. It makes no difference whether a day is considered earmarked for this planet or that god or this phase of the moon. They are all nameless days here, and they are all His.

On the more practical side of things, you suppose it’s only sensible. It’s disorienting to wake up on a Wednesday when you have forgotten Tuesday, or to think it is the day to muck out the stables when it is market day instead. When all days are the same it doesn’t much matter when they go missing. What have you really lost? 

| |

_ What falls down but never breaks? _

**| |**

You become fond of the woman who runs the temple’s smithy: Tesha is a dwarven woman, tall for her kind, and easily mistaken as human until you get close enough to see how broad she is. She has a laugh like a brass bell, loud and raucous. Her hands are hard and calloused, and there are tiny pockmarked scars all over her hands and up and down her arms, and thick raised scars surrounding her eyes, as if they’d been scalded out.

“Some years back I was struck in the eye with a spark,” she said. “Red hot, a’course. Got infected, and fever took me over. Both eyes as blighted as a curse.”

She still makes the most beautiful armor you’ve ever seen. Even those who look askance at the members of the temple will buy her wares when she brings them to market. When the pull handle on your bedroom door broke she made you a new one that very day, welded and punched cleverly so a little eye sits in the middle of the handle. You bring Tesha’s lunch out to the smithy when the weather is nice, and she nearly always stops her work to chat while she eats. 

You tell her that a group of worshippers had come from the South the other day; all six of them had run from the chancel, screaming, but two of them had stayed behind afterwards. Tesha asks if Rona still had no idea Dolchel was sweet on her, and you assert that either Rona was as dumb as a post or hoping Dolchel would forget her entirely. 

Tesha lets out a burst of laughter that booms across the open courtyard, and it takes a moment for her to compose herself enough to pick up the hauberk she’d been working on. Each loop in the mail was connected to as many as six others, she’d explained when you asked, and it was tedious work, testing each link, but she prided herself on doing it. Dead customers weren’t repeat customers, and if this armor went to one of His clerics or paladins she certainly didn’t need their death at her door. 

“Where did you learn to do this?” you ask. You’ve always been envious of those with skill.

“Oh!” she laughs again, softer, smile wide and fingers moving nimbly over the harbouk. “Don’t really remember that sort of thing anymore.”

| |

_ What is always coming but never arrives? _

| |

The library within the temple is vast, but the few texts about Him that have survived don’t say much -- perhaps there was a book which brought him power, or several books, or maybe He simply searched for knowledge in the usual manner. There may have been traveling companions, all sorts. There may have been a god-touched lover. He may have been a disciple of the Raven Queen, or a companion; perhaps as shared denizens of the Shadowfell they are friends, or enemies. Neither would surprise you.

He is a God of contradictions, like all Gods. He is unknowable yet he is worshipped; He has no name yet songs are sung for Him; it is a mark of favor to remember Him yet inevitable that you will forget. He is not a god of thieves, though sometimes a thief might pray to him - for what thief has not wanted to be invisible, to leave no trace of themself behind - and he is not a god for the elderly, though the elderly are the ones who so frequently forget. And it is true that while some come to Him  _ to  _ forget, others simply accept forgetting as the price of more knowledge. Some come to Him already blind, eager to see again, or to see what others cannot; still more tear out their own eyes in supplication, hoping for a glimpse into a plane that is not their own. 

When asked why you have come to worship, you demur. Perhaps you don’t have a good answer. Perhaps you simply don’t want to share.

| |   
  


_ What gets broken without being held? _

| |

You know His worshippers come from all walks of life. There are soldiers who want to forget what they’ve done, scholars and warlocks and wizards desperate for more knowledge, druids and forest folk who know there is more to the natural world than what can be seen by humanoid eyes. The fearful learn to be feared; the blind to see; the deaf to hear. 

When you were younger you thought anyone who followed such a God must be mad, but then you saw the truly blessed -- those with empty sockets walking around in the dark as confidently as any with eyes might in the light. You saw those who could command shadow to do their bidding, or walk in and out of it at will. You saw His acolytes call down lightning, or cast darkness, or summon doubles of themselves that could speak and hear and see. 

Power has a price, but what a  _ bargain _ , you’ve always thought - just a shadow, just a life in sunlight, just your eyes. 

| |

_ What gets bigger the more you take away? _

| |

You've never heard anyone speak His name. Not even a whisper. In the old texts that survive, His name is blurred when it appears at all. There's always a corner that's gone missing, a rip in the page, a smear of the ink. No one knows where He came from, or how He came to be what He is. That’s part of His power, you think, part of the  _ allure _ . No son of a god, no hero of man. Not a warrior or a king or a prophecy foretold. One day He simply Was. 

Clarendon says the truest of his followers know His name, but that names hold power, and such power is not for someone as lowly as them. Idessa assures you that His name is lost to time, that it is as Forgotten as the rest of him. Jemma, like so many others, thinks that He never had a name at all - that to name a thing is to know it, and He cannot be known. 

You’re not sure you care about the difference when the end result is the same. He is only Him: the God of Forgetting, the God of Fear, the Eyeless One, the Master of Shadows. What is a name compared to a title? What is the name of a god compared to his power?

| |

_ What flies without wings? _

| |

You realize, one day, that you cannot remember the last time anyone called you by your given name.

You realize sometime later that you cannot remember your name. 

Perhaps you have bargained it away, as you did your youth and your service. Or perhaps it has simply been lost to time. The passage of time means so little in the temple; can you truly say how long you’ve been here? Sometimes the faces around you are unfamiliar, but is it because you have forgotten them, or because there is a new batch of initiates? And as in all things, does it matter who else is here when this is where He dwells.

Everyone forgets, you tell them. Someone told you this, once upon a time, though you cannot remember who. Their eager little faces shine up at you -- some old, some young. Some blind in the more traditional manner. 

Everyone forgets.   
  



End file.
